DIAMETER networks are widely used today in communication networks. In a DIAMETER network of any significant size, any given device may be typically connected to an agent of some sort (for example, routing, proxying, relay, etc.) and is not connected to the device with which it is interacting. DIAMETER defines the advertising of functionality only to the connected peer. This means that a server does not know whether a device that is requesting service is a legitimate source for such a request. For example, a non-gateway device could send a message pretending to be a gateway in the routing network. By pretending to be something that it is not and by sending invalid requests, a device could wreak havoc in a network.